


There's a Moment Where You Used to Be

by dandelionboys



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Falling In Love, M/M, POV Third Person, how poe grows up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 07:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6145702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionboys/pseuds/dandelionboys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe was five years old, with dirt beneath his fingernails.<br/>Ten, when he used to cry.<br/>Thirteen, and he would fly as far as he could go, wind underneath the metal.<br/>Older still, and rougher around the edges.<br/>...Then there was Finn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Moment Where You Used to Be

When Poe was five years old, he took to exploring like fruit flies to an apple. The nearby meadow provided an ample playground for a boy his age, and he would find his feet getting muddy and dirt beneath his nails at the dinner table.  
  
When Poe was five years old, the kids around his home would laugh and jeer at the tears in his pants and the dirt on his hands, and Poe would leave. The meadow was enough for him anyway.  
  
When Poe was five, he picked the largest dandelion in the meadow and wished for a friend.  
  
OOOOO  
  
At six years old, Poe followed in his mother’s footsteps, and he would laugh as her hands wrapped around his on the controls of her old A-wing. He no longer had dirt underneath his nails, but the skies were just as appealing as the meadow on Yavin 4 now. Poe got a telescope for his birthday, an ancient thing he loved to bits.  
  
At six years old, the kids around his home were growing, and had formed their little groups. Poe didn’t care. He had his flying and the meadow, he didn’t need to fit in.  
  
At six years old, Poe would stare at the dandelions, and wonder if he’d ever have a friend.  
  
OOOOO  
  
At eight years old, his mother died.  
  
The kids were quiet, and refused to meet his eyes.  
  
OOOOO  
  
At ten, Poe would cry in the night as he heard his father in the other bedroom sobbing. He just wanted to stop being sad.  
  
Poe missed the meadow, and he missed the A-wing, but most of all he just wanted his mother back.  
  
The streets were silent in the dark.  
  
OOOOO  
  
Eleven years old now, and Poe would sometimes see the A-wing and feel a pang in his chest, but his father went back to work to keep busy. Poe had too much time in his hands, and so he began to visit the meadow again, dirt underneath his fingernails and grasses between his toes. He ran barefoot to feel something.  
  
Farther down the hill, the dandelions were growing again. Poe watched them sway in the breeze, but his father called him in for dinner and he only stayed a moment longer.  
  
OOOOO  
  
The flowers filled the meadow in in the warmer season, yellows and reds, and blues and everything in between. Poe was 13, and had a notion that it should have been captured in a painting, but at 13, the thought flitted out of his mind as he jumped in the cockpit of the A-wing. It’s his now.  
  
No one can stop him from flying.  
  
(No one ever does, but Poe is 13 and doesn’t dwell on that.)  
  
OOOOO  
  
Poe is grown, he is no longer the gangling 13 year old, and he knows he’s getting better looking in the years. He’s 20, and grins across the bar to the young woman, and asks her if she comes there often. It’s not his best introduction, but he doesn’t come back till early morning the next day.  
  
He walks the streets, cocksure, arms swinging, and people call him beautiful. They all think he was popular as a kid.  
  
He doesn’t bother to correct them.  
  
OOOOO  
  
A few years later, he leaves his father behind on Yavin 4 to join the Resistance, with a promise to visit sometime in the future.  
  
He still thinks it is the best decision he’s ever made.  
  
Sure, he could die, but there's only one person on Yavin 4 who would miss him.  
  
Poe’s jaw would clench when he thinks of home…  
  
OOOOO  
  
Age 32. Poe is captured. He has only a few hiccups on his record, but this is by far the worst. Kylo Ren invades his mind like it’s putty. It might as well be, as he tears through his memories - Poe is dragged through his loneliness, his pain, and his father’s. He can hear the kids laugh like he’s back right to when he was five years old, and standing around with dirty hands. The pain in his chest is very real. Every bad memory sticks out like a sore thumb, and his chest hurts through his dry-heaving. He’s going to die, he’s going to die, and he hasn’t even seen his father since he left.  
  
Poe grits his teeth and refuses to cry out as he simultaneously feels the man squeeze his throat and break open the walls in his head.  
  
When the Stormtrooper tears off his helmet, Poe thinks quietly in his head that it must have been a miracle. It couldn’t have been anything but. The man is beautiful, scared.  
  
He is also asking him a question, and Poe blurts out a response hazily.  
  
Poe almost smiles.  
  
It’s the beginning of something for sure.  
  
OOOOO  
  
The trooper – now Finn – is gone. The people in the nearby settlement tell Poe the sands would’ve sucked him down, and Poe feels a jolt in his stomach and feels like a child again. He’s lost, feels alone.  
  
He keeps walking. Eventually he happens across a Jakku native, and the flight back to base leaves too much time to think, so he doesn’t.  
  
OOOOO  
  
BB-8 rolls toward Poe, screaming in binary happily, and Poe catches a few words, like [FINN] and [COAT STEALER] and strangely, [MILLENIUM FALCON].  
  
But, sure enough, Poe looks up, and Finn is running toward him, and he barely gets his arms up in time to grab hold of the man. He’s warm, and Poe laughs.  
  
He’s going to thank Finn a million times, heart in his throat and adrenaline running through his veins, when he sees what he’s wearing. “…Is that my jacket?”  
  
The heat must have risen a few degrees, Poe swears, as Finn moves to shrug it off. Poe absolutely does not want that, “No, no, no! Keep it,” he tries not to stare at the man under his hands as he grabs the collar, “it suits you.”  
  
Poe bites his lip, trying to keep from grinning too much. (He punches Finn lightly on the shoulder, and feels a little less like he’s going to turn into a puddle of muck.) “You’re a good man, Finn.” More heat bubbles up from his gut, and he’s all too aware that he’s probably sweating now, and…  
  
Well, that’s that.  
  
OOOOO  
  
Poe’s a shit liar, and everyone on base knows that, and he knows that, and he hopes he never has to lie to Finn because he would no chance at all against that man.  
  
It doesn’t help that Finn is fit as hell, arms rippling as he works out in the base’s gym. There’s little free time, but sometimes he accompanies Finn around, showing him what he hasn’t seen already, and introducing him to his group.  
  
Jessika is a nightmare, and she snickers at Poe when he brings Finn up to the table where they’re eating breakfast. He realizes only a little too late his arms are wrapped around Finn’s shoulder, closer than he’d be to anyone else.  
  
Poe swallows, and prides himself on only choking once when Jessika raises her eyebrow and eyeballs the space between Poe’s and Finn’s hands. Which is minuscule.  
  
Poe huffs, and turns away. “I’ve no idea why I ever chose you guys as my friends.”  
  
The group laughs, and Poe feels his lips turn up despite him trying not to smile.  
  
He has friends…  
  
OOOOO  
  
Later, after destruction of the Starkiller Base, Poe finds himself sitting next to Finn’s bed in silence. His fingers brush lightly over the man’s hands, dark and warm despite the chill of the medical bay. He thinks of the sun on Yavin 4, and the meadows and his father waiting patiently back home. Mildly, he entertains the idea of bringing Finn there. It doesn’t matter that the only one who matters back on that planet is just one sole person.  
  
It’s just as much a part of him as the stars and emptiness of space, or the friends he has here in the Resistance, or Finn.  
  
OOOOO  
  
When Finn wakes up, Poe is snoring heavily in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Groggily, Finn eyeballs how it’s pulled up close, and feels Poe’s hand gripping his tightly even in sleep.  
  
Finn closes his eyes again, and smiles.  
  
Poe is there when he opens them again.  
  
“Hey there,” Poe’s voices is surprisingly quiet, even to himself. His hands twitch, and he runs them over the man’s forehead like his mother used to do. Finn’s eyes close, a small smile on his face when Poe brushes his lips on his, softly, giving Finn time to push him away. Of course, he doesn’t.  
  
Finn can’t get a word out, but Poe fills the silence in with stories of his own. He tells Finn everything, and for the first time in his life he tells someone of the meadow, and the flowers, and the quiet he used to share only by himself. Poe can almost feel the dirt underneath his fingernails and the grass beneath his toes as he closes his eyes and paints the picture of home. It feels as though he’s giving something of himself away to the man on the bed, whose eyes are wide and bright in the light of window nearby, but it also feels like a part of him is free. Poe wants to give everything to Finn.  
  
So he does.  
  
Finn’s hand never leaves his, even when he drifts off to sleep, halfway through Poe telling him about how the old engine of the A-wing used to give out all the time, and he’d find himself covered in oil trying to fix it.  
  
Poe breathes in, and looks out the window.  
  
Outside, underneath the many trees, small flowers sway in the breeze and Poe thinks of the wish he made when he was five and he smiles to himself in the soft sun of the med bay.

**Author's Note:**

> You are made of everything you used to be, remember that. Don't punish your past, as they are who you are now, and you will only end up causing yourself pain.  
> Keep that in mind.  
> And know this: you are not alone, not even when you are, because your future will hold people you won't see until you do.  
> Give yourself that chance.


End file.
